Closing an evocative headline......

[TheCat]

This is the headline "Woman in key No 10 role paid ?15,000 less than men for same job"

Versus this fact at the bottom of the article..."Across all current political appointees, women were paid on average 1.6% more than men overall"

I guess at Guardian Towers it's not cool to say that women might be doing well in some areas....

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/dec/14/katie-perrior-downing-street-communications-director-gender-pay-gap

[rendelharris]

So "Across all current political appointees, women were paid on average 1.6% more than men overall" - which might mean that at bottom pay level women were doing better, in subordinate low pay positions, but up top the men are doing far better. More analysis required.

Not that I really give a shit about whether someone's getting ?125k or ?150K, I'd be very glad to take either!

[Loz]

I'm actually more surprised that the other stat made it past the editors - normally they just don't print anything that doesn't square with The Agenda.

For instance, just in the last week, this story would never, ever be covered in the Guardian. Or this story even.

But, switch the genders...

[rendelharris]

Yeah you tell 'em Loz - 95% of murders in the UK are committed by men, but as long as you can come up with one story of a woman killing a man...pathetic.

[TheCat]

rendelharris Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Yeah you tell 'em Loz - 95% of murders in the UK

> are committed by men, but as long as you can come

> up with one story of a woman killing a

> man...pathetic.

Rendel, I don't think most sensible people would deny that women are disadvantaged in many areas of society...and trumpeting this loudly when it's seen is a surefire way for the media to get attention. But the lack of media coverage of some of the specific areas in which males are disadvantaged is probably the sore point here....

[TheCat]

rendelharris Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> So "Across all current political appointees, women

> were paid on average 1.6% more than men overall" -

> which might mean that at bottom pay level women

> were doing better, in subordinate low pay

> positions, but up top the men are doing far

> better. More analysis required.

>

> Not that I really give a shit about whether

> someone's getting ?125k or ?150K, I'd be very glad

> to take either!

If one assumes this is calculated the same way as the 'gender pay gap' is calculated. Then this is just an average of the pay of all women versus the pay of all men, irrespective of seniority. So, again, if it is calculated in the same way as the much trumpeted 'pay gap'...then it suggests that both women and men are well represented across all pay brackets...with women actually slightly better represented at higher pay grades....

[JohnL]

I can't believe they inserted Damian Green into the story.

[Earl Aelfheah]

TheCat is right. These are two different things. One is an example of a female employee being paid less than men doing the same job (which is unlawful). The second figure relates (presumably) to the gender pay gap, which tells you the difference between the average pay of all female employees and the average pay of all male employees (which is about representation). A couple of highly paid executives of either gender can skew the latter.

[Earl Aelfheah]

The other thing which can effect the pay gap is outsourcing something like maintenance or catering (which may have an over representation of either men and women on low pay).

This is the problem with reporting the gender pay gap without any analysis. You may have lot's of low pay cleaning staff, who are predominantly women. Outsource the service and suddenly it looks as though you've drastically cut the pay gap. In reality no one is better off.

[rendelharris]

rahrahrah Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> TheCat is right. These are two different things.

> One is an example of a female employee being paid

> less than men doing the same job (which is

> unlawful). The second figure relates (presumably)

> to the gender pay gap, which tells you the

> difference between the average pay of all female

> employees and the average pay of all male

> employees (which is about representation). A

> couple of highly paid executives of either gender

> can skew the latter.

I know that, what I was pointing out was that if you have a large number of female employees in the lower ranks earning slightly more than their male equivalents, you could have no women at all in the better paid and less numerous senior ranks and it would still come out that women earned more than men on average even if they had no representation at the higher levels.